Posted
by
Soulskill
on Friday December 11, 2009 @01:50AM
from the now-with-bloodier-frontiers dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The open source FPS Blood Frontier has now made their beta2 release. From the article: 'After many months of development, and massive amounts of input from the public, we are proud to present you with the new release of Blood Frontier, v0.85 (Beta 2). This new version totally redefines and improves the game in many ways, creating a whole new style that makes it almost nothing like its predecessor.'"

It still ruins it kinda. Sure you get off the idiots who run around at 100x speed aimbotting and killing everyone, but discreet use of esp hack that shows you where enemies are or if someone is coming behind you will still give major advantage to the cheater. It will not ruin the game completely, but it still makes it kind of stupid.

Actually this is and will always be a major problem with open source online games. You don't even need to debug assembly and create a hack for it, you just need to edit the source code and build your own client. Open source anti-cheating system has the same problems too, and in addition open source community would probably yell against locking down the client with such system. Sure, server admins can still ban the obvious cheaters, but this is one of the things commercial games (and commercial anti-cheating software) will always have advantage over open source games, at least until we can actually just render the player screen on server and transmit it over the internet.

Actually this is and will always be a major problem with open source online games. You don't even need to debug assembly and create a hack for it, you just need to edit the source code and build your own client.

Not always.

It can be solved by not sending to your client any information you shouldn't know as player or character.

Not even close. As long as computers are better at tasks than humans, the issue remains.

i.e. Think about an aim-bot. A computer is going to be more accurate and faster than a person with the same data. And even if you do the whole streaming-game thing, bot likely will still exist, that process the stream and emulate user actions far quicker than a human could

A computer is going to be more accurate and faster than a person with the same data.

If you've actually got the algorithms to back that up, you'd be a pioneer in AI.

Want to prove it? Dial Goog-411. That's right, that's Google doing voice-recognition. And their massive cluster still sometimes has to make you wait a few seconds while they try to figure out what the hell you said.

So, getting back to what you said:

Think about an aim-bot.

There are generally going to be two things happening here:

Either you've discovered a surefire way to distinguish real targets from noise, in which case, the army probably wants to tal

It's not really hard to make aimbot work so that it's not so obvious, it's only bad cheats that just jump to point to enemys head and shoot. It's obvious of course. But it's trivial to add smoothness and human-like errors to the movement. The data is there. Client knows where enemy is (because it has to be drawn). It's a matter of few cpu cycles to calculate the new direction to aim at and make command to shoot. No human can possible, ever, work that fast.

A computer is going to be more accurate and faster than a person with the same data.

If you've actually got the algorithms to back that up, you'd be a pioneer in AI.

Want to prove it? Dial Goog-411. That's right, that's Google doing voice-recognition. And their massive cluster still sometimes has to make you wait a few seconds while they try to figure out what the hell you said.

I would think that there's a slight difference between determining the vector from one known object (the local player) to another known object (an enemy in the local player's viewport) and doing voice recognition.

If you've actually got the algorithms to back that up, you'd be a pioneer in AI.

You're joking, right? The theory behind an aimbot is pretty much as simple as it gets. And it's not like you have to kill every person on the map, you could easily use the aimbot to achieve "snapping" to the target or what not.

While I'm sure you've proved something, it has nothing to do with this. If the task isn't suitable for a bot, don't do it with a bot. You'll notice I also qualified it with a statement "as long as a computer is better at the task" part. Things like social element and group work is go

An aimbot that works from only an image would not be that easy, true but an aimbot that interfaces with the game state and simply reads player positions from there is trivial since AI agents already do that (of course usually with some artificial inaccuracy and delay to prevent them from simply wiping players out).

At which point, it just becomes an arms race. Add a human-like delay, and a human can win. Add "human-like" misses, and chances are, they'll show a predictable pattern.

Client knows where enemy is (because it has to be drawn).

There are several ways to fool this kind of cheat, however. One possibility (making it up as I go) is to send false information about an enemy position, such that it likely won't be drawn (behind/in a wall, or with an invisible model) and watch for clients that immediately snap towards that target.

Another problem is ESP, warnings and other such cheats that do not directly interface gameplay, but give cheater a huge advantage because he gets a lot more info than other players.

Since there's no "-50: Hopelessly Wrong", I'll sacrifice modding parent as Overrated to post a reply that will hopefully re-clue anyone who reads and believes it.

Even with access only to the data you "should know", it's still TRIVIAL to mod a client in ways that provide significant advantages. No offense, but parent has absolutely no idea what he's talking about, and obviously no actual experience in this area.

Rather than listing 20 or 30 trivial cases that disprove your claim, I'll just take the most obvio

Actually this is and will always be a major problem with open source online games.

Actually, for some genres, an authentication scheme based on PGP's web of trust could be used to restrict who is able to participate on a match. Anybody that is obviously too good to be true could be collectively banned. Those who can't be subjectively detected, don't hinder the gameplay.

If I had the time, I would implement something like that for Frozen Bubble... (oh, but I *hate* Perl)

If you have too many G rating you will of course not be allowed on most servers.

But if an experienced player of previous games in the same genre ends up randomly matched with less skilled players due to too few games played to establish an Elo ranking, expect a significant number of spurious Gs due to the vast skill differentials. Let's say Jin8, one of the half-dozen players worldwide who have achieved the "Grand Master" grade on Tetris The Grand Master 3: Terror-Instinct, has just signed up on your puzzle game server. He could play falling block games almost with his eyes closed, as

Anybody that is obviously too good to be true could be collectively banned. [...] If I had the time, I would implement something like that for Frozen Bubble

So you like puzzle games, and you want to ban players who appear too good to be true. Would you end up banning Jin8 from playing Tetris? He's actually that good [youtube.com]. (Fast forward to 5:00 and watch for 20 seconds and be amazed.)

As I said, it's not me that bans, it is the collective. If the guy is notorious for being good, he would not be banned, even if I do vote for banning him. And for what I am familiar with, you follow other's gaming abilities develop, from sucking to good. So if a player instantly starts playing awesomely, something is wrong for sure.

As our anonymous friend replied above, this scheme can help identifying players grades [I also thought about the kyu's and dan's of Go!:-) ]. I am pretty sure Jin8 would find bo

And it's not me that lacks the distinctive singular and plural for "you"; it is post-1650 English.

So if a player instantly starts playing awesomely, something is wrong for sure.

Unless the game is a sequel or clone, as the game of the article appears to be of the Quake series. Of course a player who was an expert at Quake 1, Quake 2, Quake 3, and Quake 4 will instantly start playing Quake 5 awesomely. Jin8 was an expert at Tetris the Grand Master and Tetris the Absolute: The Grand Master 2 before he started playing this game. Likewise, a Go player in a dan skill level will instantly st

And it's not me that lacks the distinctive singular and plural for "you"; it is post-1650 English.

Would you care to elaborate? English is not my primary language.

So if a player instantly starts playing awesomely, something is wrong for sure.

Likewise, a Go player in a dan skill level will instantly start playing awesomely on a new Go server.

The problem at hand is 'new user with good skills', in which existing users with similar skills would be pleased and willing to play with. Nevertheless, inferior players would still be able to restrict him from playing with them.

Would you care to elaborate [about English's lack of distinctive number in second-person pronouns]? English is not my primary language.

Some languages have multiple words for you that distinguish singular from plural. For instance, Spanish has tu/te singular, usted/lo/la polite singular, and ustedes/las plural. German has du/dich singular, ihr/euch plural, and Sie polite. After a look through your recent Slashdot posting history, I see you appear to be familiar with places that speak Portuguese, so I'll look that up on Wikipedia: tu/te singular, você polite singular, vós/vos plural, vocês polite plural. English, on the other

Is there no such thing as sanity checking for this kind of thing? "Player has shot the last five enemies in the face at exactly the same level below the (team coloured?) helmet. He's probably got an aimbot running." or "Player was in this room, he's now in the courtyard, why the hell wasn't he in the corridor before that? Wallhax."

Judging this book by its cover, this looks like a remake of what I used to play more than a decade ago with Quake 3: Team Arena. I watched the video, looked at the website, but all of the improvements listed there boil down to either move better, or kill more stuff. Anything actually original about the gameplay that makes it Killzone 2 kind of fun?

Despite looking great, Killzone 2 isn't THAT much fun.
It's the killer graphics that made it a hit.
I agree with you that it looks a lot like the oldskool games I played back in the day, like most opensource games.
This isn't really suprising since most of them run on a heavily modified Quake2 or Quake3 engine (this game isn't though).
There should've been some actual gameplay in the trailer to get a better impression.

Despite looking great, Killzone 2 isn't THAT much fun. It's the killer graphics that made it a hit.

It's more than just the graphics. Engineers who can repair items, plant sentry turrets, or the ability to launch flying sentries. Medics who can heal/revive teammates or drain energy from the enemy. The ability to plant spawn points can really make a difference in the game balance too. Saboteurs and cloaked snipers, while not that unique, rounds out the player balance. There's also how it seamlessly switches between the different game types (Assassination, Search & Retrieve, Search & Destroy, B

It's more than just the graphics. Engineers who can repair items, plant sentry turrets, or the ability to launch flying sentries. Medics who can heal/revive teammates or drain energy from the enemy. The ability to plant spawn points can really make a difference in the game balance too. Saboteurs and cloaked snipers, while not that unique, rounds out the player balance...

So how come nobody make a killer open source single player game? every time I see an article on open source gaming all I see are a bunch of Quake 3 Arena clones. Why not something with a story to it? Nobody is expecting a free bunch to come up with something Bioshock quality, but there is plenty of players who want to do more than run around like a chicken with its head cut off blowing rockets up everyone's butts you know.

Hell make a game with humor, like NOLF, or see how totally insane you can make the en

Because Creative/Artist types want to get paid, good reliable artists are hard to find.

Programmers also want to get paid, yet many work on free software for free in their spare time, and some even get paid by big companies to develop free software like Linux, Qt, Firefox, and OpenOffice.org. I'm still not seeing the cause of the difference between the executable and nonexecutable portions of a game here.

I'd seriously like to see a set of Free as in Speech/Beer 3D Elements developed (Soldier, City Block, Assault Rifle, Gunshot Audio and Run/Jump/Walk animations for the Soldier) that any developer could plug into their game as a basic level and see if their engine works correctly. The level should have stairs, portals (doors/windows), and things to jump on. This should allow you to test opening/closing doors, occlusion, indoor and outdoor lighting a

Not that I can think of, but that's why I'm asking what's the core difference between free games and other kinds of free software that makes free games less conducive to paid contributions. Is it because you can't build a business model around selling support to medium and large businesses? In that case, free game developers would need to start marketing their products to arcades and Internet cafes.

I don't know, I think you're going to find more support in the Netbook and Phone market. Sure they might not pay much, if anything for the OS, but they're still selling a product and the end user might want to play games on the bus, train, plane, or waiting at the airport as much as the next guy.

When I bought my Droid it didn't come with 1 game! It comes with the market that lets me buy games and apps, but am I expected to believe that Verizon couldn't pony up for one Tetris/Chess/Checkers clone on a $299 p

If you RTFA'd you'd see that a single player campaign, with co-op support, is in the works.

Looks like it will make a great Quake 3 Arena replacement as-is, can't wait for single player and co-op. I especially like the nice graphics, very different from the sub-par to downright shitty graphics that are common on FOSS games.

I actually DID RTFA (I know, but I got bored) but EVERY ONE of these type of games say "single player coming soon" and you know what? Either nothing ever comes of it or you get a totally lame ass "single player" like you have for Q3 (which this is obviously a ripoff of) with lame "bots" that are nothing but oversized target dummies.

So lets be clear: A single player game is NOT bots, or the same CTF and deathmatch maps with target dummies. It has a story, it has characters, it has missions, and goals, and th

It's almost impossible to get people to work on a single vision without paying them. Everybody has ideas and wants to contribute but for a proper original work you need something consistent. The reason so many FOSS games are clones of popular games is because the vision of "let's make an opensource clone of game X" is easily understood and everyone knows the result.

They have to be like that. I play Section 8 and many people whine about combat being too slow in that game because you don't get one shot twitch kills and whatnot (especially how they can't be the hero and wipe out a whole squad just with their 1337 skills when the obvious solution to that problem is to bring your own squad). I've seen a video of MW2 being played with dual shotguns, it never seemed to take more than one shot to kill a player. It wasn't so much a firefight as a game of hide 'n seek where the

Well, Quake 3 was fun in the day and it still is fun today (see Quake Live).If this open source game mimics the gameplay of Quake 3, it's something I could enjoy.

What I'm wondering about though is what this game offers beyond what Quake 3 (Quake Live) offers. Graphically it looks pretty much on par with Quake 3, but then we're talking about a 10 year old game here. Since the sourcecode for the Quake 3 engine is released under GPL, I don't see what the point of this project is, as they could simply build the

this looks like a remake of what I used to play more than a decade ago

This! I mean it's wonderful that many talented coders donate their efforts into games like this. But what we need is some open source designers, graphic artists and such.

The game may be fun, but when I look at the screenshots, all I see is the same blocky maps and ugly textures that I've seen 10 years ago.Due to this, I myself and probably a lot of others are not even going to download it and give it a try. It might be the most _fun_ game on the planet, but it does need a visual 'hook' to lure people in to

It looks interesting from the video, but I'm tired of playing Quakelikes after all these years. And I only played Quake for the first time about five years ago.

Clones and similar games are inevitable, of course. I just wish someone would start cloning other hallmark FPS games, like Serious Sam, Doom, Perfect Dark, etc. I'd really like to see some sort of espionage-based FPS out there in open source; something like Splinter Cell, Perfect Dark, or Rainbow Six. Fun things like cloaking devices, remote cameras,

Don't count on clones of "other hallmark FPS games" that you mention (at least not on any bearable level of quality)

Quakelikes are easy to make not only thanks to engines for the taking but also relatively easy game asset creation (it helps that there are lots of map makers, itself thanks to higher relative ease of making deathmatch map than interesting single player level)

Well, perhaps Serious Sam at some point, that can be made more or less procedurally.

Tribes2's been reactivated thanks to tribesnext, but it's basically on life support again thanks to one particularly sociopathic "competitive" player.

Serious Sam HD is out and supposedly has a reworked netcode so it'll work better now. It's basically a 1:1 with new graphics and a new engine as far as I know but tbh when it comes to Serious Sam I'm fine with that. Some singeplayer is worth replaying.

"You think you're being sportsman-like and friendly when in reality you are being uncompetitive and childish."

The man's entire worldview revolves around how he is the one true savior of the one true Tribes gametype and everyone else who doesn't just agree with him but actively assist him in harassing the rest until they also join is a part of some vast conspiracy led by a guy named Qing to ensure that Tribes dies and nobody plas it.

Feel free to mod this post as flamebait, but I feel it's time to rant about the Open Source gaming community. It seems to me whenever there's a new Open Source FPS that comes out, it's just another pathetic Quake clone. Sure the trailer videos *look* cool, and sure the screenshots are rendered at high resolution, with all the bells and whistles enabled. All is good until it comes to the actual gameplay. It's disappointing when all the freetards (excuse my french) drool over another cheezy clone (merely beca

Yeah, I was really curious how this compares to Warsow. Warsow is a really solid project and doesn't have the crazy balance issues stuff like Nexuiz seems to have. It also takes the Q3 formula and tweaks it just enough to give you something new, which impresses me.

Okay, there are a lot of FOSS FPSes out there... But what many posters here have noticed, they seem to be mostly Q3A clones. What about people who aren't competitive-level Quake players? Is there anything else out there? I mean, Warsow, Nexuiz and Cube may be great games but I'd like something different. Perhaps something with a decent singleplayer mode.

The only thing I can think of is Aleph One/M1A1 and while Bungie certainly knew how to make a good game I think it's kind of sad that in the FOSS FPS doma

A person starts a game to be entertained by it. Encountering massive skill differences right away and being required to put a lot of work into the game before it becomes fun tells them to go elsewhere and play something fun instead. You can make your extremely skill-based games but they must be fun from the moment the player starts the game up or he will not stay. No arcade game bludgeoned you with its super-hard parts right at the start, they knew people wouldn't throw another coin in there if they get the

Thing is, the closest you can get to make an online FPS game attractive for beginners is a good skill matching system. Quake Live does this part wonderfully, and i bet it's one of the reasons it's so popular, besides the carrying Quake trademark.

The "textures" package included in Blood Frontier may only be distributedwith the Blood Frontier package. Redistribution or repacking outsidethis context without the author's consent is strictly prohibited.

If you want a real open-source shooter that rocks, try Nexuiz [osreviews.net].

... I'm always curious why the open source FPS games look like they are about 7 or 8 years behind the closed-source industry.

Its like they're not even trying to compete. Go to the Game Developers Conference, guys... Take some notes... See what the top devs are doing in the future and start doing that NOW. Then you'll catch the wave at the right point.

open source FPS always catch my attention long enough to notice this consistent failure to get with the times.

i think the most obvious reason would be that id software traditionally releases their older game engines to open source when they roll out one that is two generations newer. you can't say that isn't nice of them. on the other hand, it leads to open source gaming being full of projects that start with, say, an older quake engine, and try to add modern features to it (some of them do look good, but so far none have really challenged the current mainstream leaders). you would think this approach would lead to

someone's going to point this out to me anyway if i don't mention it, but Blood Frontier itself isn't based on Quake. (i didn't know that until a couple of minutes ago). naturally that makes half of my post irrelevant to TFA. Since i like Sauerbraten, and this game appears to actually have a story, i think i'm gonna have to look into it. i do think work on a new engine is necessary to make open source gaming all it can be, and the cube 2 engine is pretty neat, especially when editing on-the-fly. it's not de

The problem is assets, not code. A single competent developer can easily turn even something as old as the original *QW* engine into something that is technically on par with anything currently available, even massively-overhyped "awesome" engines like crysis.

A single competent developer can't make 400MB of high-quality textures though, or model and animate 30 monsters, or create the 500 sounds a game needs not counting the voices of humanoid creatures, and so on.

A single competent developer can easily turn even something as old as the original *QW* engine into something that is technically on par with anything currently available....

If this were true, I would think most developers would do so with the freely available older engines. That isnt' the case. Companies like Epic sell their Unreal Engine to many companies. If it were so simple, people wouldn't need to buy.

Or maybe my facts aren't perfect in that assumption. I'm just a speculating gamer. Tell me something about this biz.:)

dude... big entertainment (yes, these GREAT big games, like GTA, Gears of War, Modern Warfare, Uncharted, etc.... They take millions of dollars to develop. GTA 4 cost TONS and was worth every penny.

They gotta be driven by profits, and people gladly pay for good games. Its not something that really *needs* to be done for free. People love games like they love everything else they do a lot of in life. You like to skate, you buy skateboard and wheels n stuff. YOu like to rock climb, you get into it, you b

I'm just having a good time watching you eat sour lemons all day for sheer lack of appreciation.

Life sucks huh?! Its so horrible!

Like I said, your prejudice is ridiculous, and thats why you're such a clown. The game mechanics in U2 are amazing. You'd never know, though.. You're still waiting for them to make it 2d and require the pressing of one button and down to keep it slow enough for you.

I'm 28. Kid, no. Been gaming over 20 years. I've tried it all and, unlike you, i've found a way to appreciate gr